Talking Stock: Hi-de-Hi’s Closing Credits, Part Two

Dear reader, I fear that with my last article, I may have pushed your goodwill too far. Moreover, I may yet do so again before the end of this article. So before you click away and resolve to never to read another word of this dumb website, let’s quickly dive into some of the good stuff I’ve been promising.

So, where exactly does the stock footage used in the end credits of Hi-de-Hi! come from? Well, let’s throw ourselves straight into some Pathé archive, shall we? And immediately, something rather exciting makes itself obvious…

Spaghetti eating race

Date: 1960¹ • Original Footage: Pathé • Links: Pathé / YouTube

Hang on… colour?!

Yes, let’s not bury the lede. The joy of all the original footage we’re going to be looking at today is that – unlike the newsreels from the opening titles – all the footage was originally shot in colour. That means that a previously hidden decision by Hi-de-Hi! suddenly becomes very apparent – all this footage was deliberately changed from colour to black and white for use in the end credits.

One reason for this is obvious – to match the opening credits. But there is surely a further, more interesting reason: that even in 1980, to make actuality footage feel like the 60s, it had to be downgraded to black and white. Of course archive footage of a spaghetti eating contest from 1961 was going to be shot in black and white… even if it actually wasn’t. The collective memory, as ever, cheats.

But that means that the reverse is also true. When we go back and look at this footage now in colour, it suddenly takes on a new life of its own. You suddenly feel like you’re actually there – in this case, in Butlin’s, Clacton. I could stare at this footage for hours.

Highly amusingly, the notes which go along with this footage point out that what is being dished out here is actually “macaroni, but I guess ‘macaroni race’ doesn’t sound so exciting”. Which is the kind of pedantic point I’d make if I was charged with documenting all this footage.

As a point of order, back in 1986, ITV broadcast a documentary about Butlin’s, called Hello Campers: 50 Years of Butlin’s. The entire programme is available on YouTube. And what is present, 19:11 into the show? Why, footage of a certain spaghetti-eating competition. Nice to see ITV making use of the clip too, especially at a point where Hi-de-Hi! was still on air…

Bikini Competition

Date: 1961 • Original Footage: Pathé • Links: Pathé / YouTube

Again, material shot at Butlin’s Clacton. I think this is my favourite piece of footage, and not because of the obvious. Indeed, the information given in the full clip actually makes this all less seedy than it initially appears. While this is still a bikini competition, we also discover that part of the competition is to make the costume before modelling it. Indeed, the the judges are actually assessing how well the bikini is made, rather than the body which is wearing it. Which makes it less of a sordid beauty contest, and more of an arts and crafts exhibition. Isn’t that nice?

“Trouble is, material is flat, and the girls aren’t!”

Oh well, I tried.

Regatta

Date: 1960 • Original Footage: Pathé • Links: Pathé / YouTube

Yet again, we’re at Butlin’s Clacton, with a load of messing around in boats. Is the fat man going to fall over into the water? Is he? Is he? Spoiler: yes. And so now you know where that famous image which ends many Hi-de-Hi! episodes comes from.

One interesting thing: these Pathé features seem to go out their way to never actually use the name “Butlin’s”, instead preferring to refer generically to a “holiday camp” instead.

Chariot racing

Date: 1960 • Original Footage: Pathé • Links: Pathé / YouTube

Butlin’s again, but this time it’s not Clacton, but the camp at Filey in Yorkshire. And here we get some useful context which isn’t really apparent from the brief clips that Hi-de-Hi! uses. In fact, it’s not really obvious at all until watching the original footage that this is a mock chariot race, with everybody dressing up in pseudo-Roman gear.

Note that the narrator can’t resist getting excited about the idea that somebody may lose their toga at the end, despite the fact that this is extremely unlikely. Did all Pathé narrators exist in a permanent state of sexual arousal?

This is another clip where the colour really helps sell the shots in a way the black and white footage doesn’t; the painted chariots really stand out here in a way they just don’t in Hi-de-Hi!‘s credits.

*   *   *

Right, that’s enough ACTUAL INTERESTING INFORMATION, back to some annoying stuff. You will note that the above sections only cover four sequences of the end credits. But in my last article, I listed nine full sequences. What gives?

Let’s first take a look at the paperwork from the pilot, listing these clips:

All the Pathé material was easy to find.² The rest of the footage, however, is from British Movietone – and helpfully, the paperwork gives absolutely no other information about it whatsoever. Surely the most hateful four words in the English language are “Holiday camps various shots”?

If we then check the paperwork for the episode “Pigs Might Fly”, we do get one additional piece of information – the catalogue number “245/19”:

Perhaps this indicates that all the missing holiday camps are from one single reel of compilation shots, rather than spread across many stories? Sadly, I still haven’t been able to find them. The Movietone archive was eventually acquired by the Associated Press in 2016, and plenty of their footage is available online. Hours of searching, however, has lead nowhere.

But we can’t leave this article on a downer, can we? While I haven’t managed to trace the rest of the actual footage, I have managed to trace a definite location for one section of it. Remember the shots of the miniature railway?

Luckily, someone has done at least part of my work for me. While we can’t trace exactly where the original footage comes from, it is definitively from Butlin’s Clacton³, as John Chenery details here. And because train geeks are gonna be train geeks, there’s tons of information about this exact train online. So, this locomotive was originally called “Parracombe”, and remained at Clacton until 1976. Eventually renamed “Maltby” in 2018, she now resides at the Groudle Glen Railway on the Isle of Man.

And until I manage to unearth the rest of all this footage, that’s as close as you’re getting to a uplifting ending… for now.

With huge thanks to Al Dupres.

1. Sadly, I haven’t been able to trace any of this material to any date more exact than the year. This footage, for instance, was issued on the 17th October 1960, but won’t have been shot on that date – for all we know, nowhere near it, in fact. When you’re dealing with spaghetti competitions rather than Macmillan being elected, dates become fuzzy. Who would have thought it? ↩

2. Indeed, you’ll note that while three sections of footage are listed as from Pathé here, I actually found four: the chariot racing is also Pathé footage. I found this while browsing the Pathé library for any holiday camp footage I could get my hands on. An inaccuracy in a PasC sheet? How unheard of. ↩

3. Incidentally, I suspect that a fair amount of the footage I can’t trace is actually from Butlin’s Clacton. For instance, Clacton’s indoor swimming pool looks remarkably similar to the one pictured in Hi-de-Hi‘s closing titles. But without a smoking gun, I ain’t calling it. ↩

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